Marek Posted August 8, 2006 Gamesindustry.biz has a nice column up written by Colin Anderson of Denki titled "Dawn of the age of development". I've actually been meaning to write something similar. It feels like there's something different in the air right now. Although I would have never used interactive TV as an example, I really agree with the overall sentiment of the article. Check it out: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=18798 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wrestlevania Posted August 8, 2006 Good games exist, lots of them - and some games will even make money, but the vast majority of titles are lucky to break even. The industry's blinkered view of what constitutes a 'real' game is allowing huge areas of it's potential audience to escape. More and more titles are competing in the same, tired genres. In many ways, the market is close to stagnation. Brilliantly put. I really like the way he highlights cost to the consumer as a barrier to entry for new titles--I think that's going to be critical with the forth-coming consoles. Microsoft have already - very cleverly - smashed this barrier down with Live Marketplace (albeit for the hellishly expensive dev kits and licences). Nintendo are bringing an inexpensive games download service with Wii, too. I want to see what Sony is doing in this regard for PlayStation 3; there's no reason why the strength of that brand should preclude the widest selection of this kind of game for consumers. In fact, I believe Sony must offer the most eclectic and varied choice because they've already captured the attention of so much of the market this generation. Everyone knows the PlayStation brand, even if they're not interested in video games at all, so it'd be nice to see Sony intelligently lever this to bring in new players. They may have already shot themselves in the foot however, with that astronomical PS3 price point. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
elmuerte Posted August 8, 2006 Faced with dozens or hundreds of games for the GBA, all at the same price point and all presented the same way, the consumer would go for something recognisable over something unknown and potentially a waste of cash. Consumers are not high rolers. If the stakes are high enough they back out. Unless players know what they're buying, they're very conservative. Let them try something for free and all of sudden they'll dive in, wallets open... Well... we used to have demos of pretty much every game. That's why we bought printed game magazines that came with a CD-Rom. So we could try out the demos. Don't know what happened, but ever since I cancelled my subscription on PC Gameplay I haven't played a lot of demos. So yeah. I mis out on some interesting games. Then again, a lot of games I want to try don't have demos. I don't really see a new age. The possibility of online distribution has been there for over 10 years. As for the Live! Arcade... I somehow get the feeling people have been waiting for somebody to take this step. The whole idea has been coined a shit load of times before and they all failed for various reasons (mostly because of the intrusive nature of the systems (crappy Real shit)). For consoles this has never been the case, and for console there's less of an issue of an intrusive and annoying system that delivers the goods. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
